Well, I took that challenge. Instead of the Domination of the Draka facing off against the Alliance for Democracy, I created a world in which the traditionalist-reactionary Afrikaner Confederation and a motley crew of allies like the Sikh Empire in India, Tibet, and Thailand faced off against a League of Democracies encompassing the rest of the world. I wrote multiple versions of the timeline as I went along (here is the current version) and even sold some short fiction set in that world. My first story, "Coil Gun," I sold to Digital Fiction Publishing in 2011 for $0.05 a word, my first "pro" sale. The story appeared in their anthology Pressure Suite and in fact inspired the cover art. DFP eventually bought the reprint rights for another story set in that world, "Picking Up Plans in Palma." That one appeared in their collection Cosmic Hooey as well as the stand-alone.

*The "Armageddon Trilogy." The novelette (it's not long enough to be a novella) "Palma" is at its heart a family saga. Journalist Katje de Lange emigrates to the United States with the reluctant blessing of her father David, against the strong opposition of her Theonomic zealot brother Thomas, as a result of the Confederation growing more authoritarian and more hostile toward women having careers. In America, where she's actually rather conservative despite being a flaming liberal by Afrikaner standards, she ends up romantically involved with Irish Catholic intelligence analyst Connor Kelly. Kelly ends up being sent into the Confederation in a harebrained scheme to retrieve some vital data, which is the main plot of "Palma." The proposed trilogy of novels picks up a few years later as World War III looms and follows the extended Kelly-de Lange family through it.

(This is a long-shot project considering how the acceptance for publication of my teen horror novel The Thing in the Woods means my next finished novel will likely be its sequel and how, owing to Ms. Buroker's huge fan-base, writing Kindle Worlds stories for her will likely make me lots of short-term cash. However, it never hurts to have many irons in the fire.)

When combined with some other ideas for stories featuring various de Lange ancestors as the Confederation is built and Kelly's own forebears in different versions of the American Revolution, the Mexican War, and the Civil War, this could be something like James Michener's generations-long stories. Think Michener's Covenant(South Africa) or Poland(guess) or James Clavell's Tai-Pan and Noble House, which both center around wealthy European-descended trading families in the Far East. Considering how the Draka series is a family saga of the von Shrakenbergs (and a spinoff branch fathered by one raping an enslaved Frenchwoman, who gives birth to twins after escaping to America), that's appropriate.

*Screenplays for "Coil Gun" and "Palma." I've actually written 85 pages or so for a "Coil Gun" spec script. This isn't the 1980s anymore, so villainous South Africans aren't in, plus it offends the zeitgeist in other ways like depicting a nuclear war as survivable with sufficient anti-missile weapons and good civil defense. I'd pondered pitching it as an animated film to reduce production costs. "Palma" might be easier to handle, as it's basically a run-and-gun you could film in Florida or somewhere else similarly warm to mimic East Africa.

*Another short story entitled "Killing The Rijnsburg." I promise I came up with the title before Bill O'Reilly started writing his historical books. I started writing this long ago, but abandoned it after failing to find a first-rights buyer for "Palma." The Rijnsburg is the Afrikaners' major orbital battle-station and taking it out is a major part of the WWIII battles in space. This battle is mentioned in "Coil Gun" and the plans for it are the McGuffin in "Palma," so it's thematically appropriate the third story be about the battle-station's destruction. Maybe when Digital Science Fiction starts accepting new stories again...

*There are various other individual story ideas I haven't really developed. One follows the neglected son of "Palma" antagonist Eugene Visser (seriously, Visser never even mentions him in the story, although be fair he has no real reason to) as he tries to do his dead old man proud by committing terrorist attacks against American occupation fores after the Confederation falls. Another features a dug-in Afrikaner regiment dying to a man to the tune of "In Christ Alone" to allow some women and children to escape an oncoming army.

Per that last point, although the Afrikaner Confederation is objectively an authoritarian, semi-theocratic (especially later) racist evil empire, there is much to admire about their culture. Things like faith, duty, honor, and bravery, all of which are held in far less esteem these days. My Afrikaners are less blatantly gross than the Draka, so it's easier to write them as protagonists. Given how the Afrikaners' evil especially offends the zeitgeist (they're racists and religious bigots), I could imagine that would grind a few folks' gears, even if I make characters like David de Lange (and not his zealous son or the sadistic Visser) the protagonists.

Friday, April 21, 2017

This past Wednesday evening, my first original Kindle project in years (if you don't count the audio version of my horror story "I am the Wendigo," since that was a different edition of an older work) went live. Behold my science fiction novella Ten Davids, Two Goliaths, set in Lindsay Buroker's FALLEN EMPIRE universe.

Here's my Amazon blurb, which I wrote myself...

The Tri-Sun Alliance has been nibbling at the edges of the Sarellian Empire, attacking isolated patrols, supply convoys, and even civilian supporters of the regime. But now Alliance intelligence has learned of something worth gambling their limited combat power--a pair of Imperial escort cruisers on a training mission near an isolated world.Helping command the attack is Lt. Geun Choi, a former Imperial fighter pilot disgraced by an act of mercy. Serving under him is Tamara Watson, another ex-Imperial with demons of her own. But whatever their pasts, the two must improvise or die when it turns out the intelligence that sent them on the mission wasn't complete and the carefully-planned ambush develops complications.Taking place before pilot Alisa Marchenko met her future engineer Mica Coppervein and well before the Empire fell, this tale set in Lindsay Buroker's FALLEN EMPIRE universe explores the early days of the Great Rebellion. Fans of STAR WARS, FIREFLY, WING COMMANDER, and the tales of Honor Harrington will enjoy this adventure.

If you're into military sci-fi or space opera, or just want to see Billy Mitchell's theories on air-power vs. ships tested out IIIN SPAAACE, then you might like this. It's around 10,000 words long, so it won't take very long for you to read and enjoy. There's one small problem in that Kindle Worlds is for some reason limited to American (USA) readers only, but there is a way around that. Visit this link here for more.

This story (and some consulting work I did for Ms. Buroker) would not have happened if I weren't a regular listener to the Science Fiction and Fantasy Marketing Podcast. So if you're looking for some advice on how to sell and market your work, check it out.

Friday, April 14, 2017

I have very little interest in watching the show Life After People because it's my understanding that the early episode(s) devote a great deal of time to the grim fate of pets left trapped in houses after all humans mysteriously disappear. Like, "Let's look at a hungry dog trying to tear through plastic into a loaf of bread" or "let's watch this cat try to open a door" level of detail. Seriously people, it's supposed to be educational, not a freaking tear-jerker.

I'm a member (and technically an admin of) the S.M. Stirling Appreciation Society Facebook group, which is dedicated to the works of S.M. Stirling. Stirling himself is a regular participant, offering his fans behind-the-scenes details of his works. His most successful series is known as the Emberverse and begins with the novel Dies the Fire. Basically one day in 1998 all technology fails--no electricity, no internal combustion, no firearms. Within a year, 90% of the human race is dead. Most of California ends up a Death Zone where nobody lives except bands of cannibal savages.

Me: The story follows a pack of military K-9s (with or without their human handler) who survive the collapse of civilization and live in the wild. Heck, tell the story from their POV (xeno-fiction) and call it "The Last Marines." Heck, if you want a heartwarming ending, I'm imagining years later a descendant of one of those dogs raised in military K-9 ways by previous generations of dogs encountering surviving (human) descendants of US Marines from elsewhere (say a training detachment in an isolated area hooks up with/protects a group of survivors) and recognizes them as kin.

Another person, who is familiar with German Shepherd dogs, wrote the following:

This is cool. I have had GSDs for a few years. They would probably go looking for humans - they like the companionship. It would be interesting if a few were intact - then they could breed with coyotes. My GSD has a prey drive - he has, and would, eat a prey he can hunt. So far, rabbit was the largest one he caught and ate. But if they team up - the sky is the limit.
My response:

If they're naturally inclined to look for humans, perhaps "The Last Marines" wander California during the die-off, helping, say, catch runaway livestock or wild animals for a starving group of refugees under a bridge, ambushing and massacring a group of Eaters about to attack a "clean" survivor band, etc.They could become the subject of legend among the survivors, as a sort of group of canine knights-errant. Perhaps that's how they come into contact, years later, with a group of human Marines (or their children raised in that culture)--the human Marines recognize obvious Marine stuff (do K-9s have "dog vests" or a particular habit or quirk they're trained into?) and seek them out.For a heartwarming moment, set the contact with the human Marines in a years-later epilogue in which the oldest dog in the pack, the last of the original K-9s, lives just long enough to encounter the human Marines before going off to a long-deserved rest.I'm not crying, you're crying.
Yes, that story brought tears to my eyes. I don't want to own a pet because I recognize the awesome (in the awe-inspiring sense, not the "AWESOME!" Ninja Turtles sense) responsibility it involves, but I do rather like dogs.

The Good Guys have just inflicted a defeat on Negan and his allies, the treacherous Scavengers, but as far as they know, the enemy leadership is intact. Furthermore, the Saviors have massive numbers and thanks to Morgan, the Kingdom has lost its most capable military leader.

First things first, bite off the low-hanging fruit. They know where the Scavengers are, they know the Scavengers aren't very numerous (120 tops and they took losses in the attempt on Alexandria), and the Scavengers are significantly weaker than the Saviors. March on the junkyard, leaving a screening force between the Sanctuary and any known Savior outposts to interfere with any relief or attacks on Alexandria, Hilltop, etc. while the army is gone, and wipe the Scavengers out completely. Put the head of Jadis (the leader of the group) on a spike and claim the junkyard's resources for the war. Punishing the Scavengers for their backstabbing also shows Negan cannot protect his subordinates and allies, a lesson the leaders of other communities under the Saviors' thumb would do well to learn.

(Speaking of subordinates and allies, now Alexandria has more guns from the Saviors killed in the battle in the finale, they should send a delegation to Oceanside to give them a few, with their old arsenal to be replaced in its entirety once Negan falls. Rick and friends took EVERY SINGLE ONE of Oceanside's guns, which was very Neganian of them and, in the immortal words of Negan himself, "not cool." Returning too many wouldn't be a good idea, since they'll probably need every gun possible for the coming war, but maybe two or three. Another "repayment on the gun loan" can be made once the Scavengers are dealt with. Not only would this be the right thing to do, but by showing Oceanside the Saviors can be defeated, it might be possible to recruit some of them.)

Destroying the Saviors' outposts in detail, hitting each one with overwhelming numbers before they can gather up into an overpoweringly large force, is a good idea, but Rick and friends don't know where all of them are. The Kingdom might know where the one they were paying tribute is, so that's a start.

One strategy to counter the Saviors' numbers would be to use the dead as a weapon like the Wolves did. Find ways to lure swarms of the undead onto Savior outposts or the Sanctuary itself. Rick and friends are probably too moral to use the dead to destroy surviving centers of civilization, but the outposts aren't large population centers like the Sanctuary and the zombies don't have to overrun them completely, just keep the Saviors busy and reduce their manpower. Considering how Rick and friends have stolen explosives from the Sanctuary's explosive anti-zombie defense, this wouldn't be that hard to implement. Even if the Sanctuary can repel a zombie swarm a few guys with bullhorns can funnel through the gap in their defenses, it'll definitely interfere with Negan's mobilization.

A high-risk high-reward strategy would be to do to Negan what Caesar did to Vercingetorix at Alesia and lay siege to the Sanctuary while laying an outer line of defense to keep reinforcements from the outposts away. A murderous donut, if you will. A strategy this aggressive would put Negan on the back foot and allow for re-establishment of contact with the traitorous Dwight or the weak Eugene, who'll probably flip back to the good guys if it can be done safely. Dwight mentioned joining forces with the workers at the Sanctuary, so it might be possible there are more allies to be found.

(One problem with trying to get help from Eugene is the fact that they tried to blow him up in the season finale and Negan knows this.)

However, Alesia was a pretty near-run thing (it took Caesar himself leading the last of the Roman reserves to prevent a breakthrough at one point) and Negan has shown himself able to think two steps ahead of Rick and friends. This is on full display when he used his superior numbers to progressively block the routes to Hilltop in "Last Day on Earth" before trapping Rick and his crew outright and again in the season finale when he had the Scavengers turn traitor at the worst possible time. A strategy that aggressive might be too risky.

Negan and the Saviors.

Negan knows that Hilltop, Alexandria, and the Kingdom are in open rebellion against him. He also has the Scavengers as allies.

If I were in Negan's position, I would start by keeping a very close eye on Eugene. Negan is clearly suspicious of him, based on the conversation they have at the end of the episode. He might need Eugene's technical skills and so isn't going to throw him into the oven or take Lucille to him yet, but he's clearly not trustworthy. I would have someone who is definitely loyal, like Simon, keep an eye on him.

(Negan would be insane to trust Dwight, given how he raped Dwight's wife Sherry and, as far as he knows, she ran away and got eaten by zombies. If I were Negan I wouldn't know Dwight was a traitor but I'd be a bit more careful with him on principle.)

I would also emphasize to Eugene that Rick tried to blow him up when the latter tried to negotiate Alexandria's surrender and save lives. Eugene is weak and cowardly, so using this as a lever to set him against his friends is doable.

Secondly, I would provide military support to the Scavengers. You don't win wars by letting your allies hang and the Scavengers are vulnerable, given the losses they took in the failed attack on Alexandria and the fact Rick and friends know where they are. It might also be the perfect chance to ambush a significant part of the allies' army, if they go for the Scavengers first and don't guard their flanks.

As far as the first target for an offensive, I'd go for Hilltop. The Hilltop community doesn't seem to be particularly large (unlike the Kingdom) and it's not the primary base of operations for the rebellion's leader Rick (unlike Alexandria), so it'd be a relatively easy first target. Furthermore, Negan knows that Maggie is still alive and that Rick had gone to great lengths to conceal her from him (the whole fake grave thing). If the Hilltop in general and Maggie in particular were under threat, that might be a way to draw out the rebels for the type of battle that favors Negan's superior numbers.

(Plus if Maggie were taken alive, she could be useful as a hostage or bait given how important she obviously is to Rick and friends. A postcard or radio broadcast of Negan's typical gross sexual comments about Maggie and Rick might do something stupid. Negan doesn't even have to abandon his policy against--forcible--rape to do this. In the comics, he made comments about some of his goons "running train" on Carl only to return him to Rick unharmed, so it's in-character.)

Alternatively, going for Alexandria again in order to cut the head off the snake (kill Rick) and this time make sure of it, is a viable strategy. The longer the war goes on, the more likely other communities under Negan's thumb or the workers in the Sanctuary might get restless, so this would be a chance to end the rebellion early. With Rick dead, Hilltop might surrender (Gregory can be restored to power for status quo ante--just blame Maggie and her entourage for the whole situation) and the Kingdom can be negotiated back into line. Throw on the blame on Rick, claim he and his troublemakers deceived Ezekiel to let the King save face, and try to get status quo ante there too.

As far as broader policy is concerned, I would lighten up on "half your shit." It's my understanding that Negan regularly taking half of Hilltop's supplies was driving them toward extinction and pushed them to ally with Rick in the first place. A tax rate that extreme is killing the goose that laid the golden egg. The communities under Negan's thumb could have lived with a much lower tax rate, or a tax payable in something less precious than supplies. A group of workers from a community for a day or two corvée labor restoring old roads, clearing out zombies from strategic sites, etc. instead of the supplies they need to survive would be much more in Negan's interest than taxing communities to the point it's rebellion or death. It could also provide evidence for Negan's claim that he's "bringing civilization back to this world" as opposed to just extorting everybody.

Finally, I would take pains to deter treachery by vassal communities. One article said it made no sense for Negan to leave existing leaders in place, or at least not have garrisons in towns under his rule. Negan can spare a few soldiers to keep whatever other equivalents of Gregory he has out there in line while maintaining a solid defense of the Sanctuary and a mobile force to deal with Hilltop-Kingdom-Alexandria.

As my friend Daniel (or maybe it was Nick, but I think it was Daniel) put it when telling me they were going to the live show, this is the one where Jason meets Carrie. Serial killer Jason Voorhees has been chained at the bottom of Crystal Lake and the camp is back to normal, until he's accidentally unleashed by telekinetic teen Tina Shepard (Lar Park Lincoln). Can she use her powers to send him back to whence he came before he wipes out love interest Nick (Kevin Spirtas) and his friends next door and before her odious psychiatrist Dr. Crews (Terry Kiser) has her forcibly sent back to the mental institution? We'll see...

The Good

*I will give this one props for originality. Instead of just "Jason butchers sex-crazed camp counselors vol. 10," they have him face off against a more powerful opponent, a teen girl with psychic powers. And with the original Carrie coming out in 1976 and both the delayed sequel and the remake coming out much later, it's clear the 1988 movie was not a blatant cash-grab on a more successful film.

*Many slasher films from the 1980s were criticized for the prolonged, often sexualized killings of female characters, while the male characters were killed quickly. Jason's opening killing reverses that--the woman is ambushed and killed immediately, while her boyfriend is chased down, impaled on a thrown knife, and then lifted off the ground by the knife embedded in his back. This movie was made at the end of the decade, so possibly the people behind it had been listening to the criticism.

*The details of Jason's costume are quite well-done. Jason has been killed, buried, decayed, resurrected by lightning, and trapped at the bottom of a lake for a prolonged period. You can see his skeleton through his rotten flesh in various places at at one point, his teeth through a hole in his cheek where the mask doesn't cover it. The makeup department was certainly detail-oriented. TVTropes states that the specific wounds from the earlier films were taken into account.

*One of the scenes where Jason stalks a victim manages some suspense.

*For a rotting undead corpse with a machete, Jason displays some strategic sense, including at one point cutting off power to the house before commencing his attack.

The Bad

*The opening consists of a montage of clips from previous Friday the 13th films to introduce just where Jason is now. I understand the need to introduce the film to a new audience, but it was a bit info-dumpy. Maybe just depict Tommy Jarvis sinking Jason into the lake and be done with it? A "cold open" consisting solely of that would be at least tolerable.

Let's be realistic. Who starts with the seventh film in a series? Realistically whoever is seeing this one has seen the previous ones, or at least knows who Jason Voorhees is.

*Another alternative would be to scrap the entire "meet Jason" beginning and start with the image of Jason chaind at the bottom of the lake while the camera pans up to the scene introducing young Tina. That way the threat of Jason is introduced, but the focus is on the new character Tina and her psychic powers.

*It's hard to tell most of the supporting cast (a group of young people staying at a cabin near Tina's) apart and rather than develop them, they just keep adding new characters. They're just a bunch of what I call "teen slasher meat." Although they have a fig leaf for why the group keeps getting larger (they're all gathering for a friend's surprise party), the guy's friend group could be smaller and more time spent on building them up. It risks turning into Twenty Minutes With The Jerks considering how many of them treat Tina, but if it was also trimmed down a bit as well, it wouldn't eat up too much screentime.

*Does NOBODY ever hear Jason coming? He's a big burly guy walking through the woods with lots of twigs and the like to crunch on, but he's always able to sneak up on people. Most of the movie's kills consist of him taking people by surprise and killing them immediately without any real creativity. And he can just show up wherever he's needed for a fight scene, even though there's no way for him to get there.

*Apparently there's a much bloodier cut than the one available on Amazon. It looks like it was edited to minimize the blood, and in some cases the cuts are very abrupt. Jason's killing one character cuts away in the middle of the death, just when the blood shows up but before we can see a lot of it.

*There's a missed opportunity for comedy involving a couple stoned characters and a flashlight.

*There's another missed opportunity with Dr. Crews. He's clearly manipulating Tina and her mother for his own ends and based on some articles he has stashed away he knows about Jason, but it's never fully developed. He could have been like Dr. Channard from Hellbound: Hellraiser II who has a hidden agenda related to the supernatural foe, but this never goes anywhere.

*I'm not going to go into a lot of detail about the absolute end, but it doesn't make sense on multiple levels.The Verdict

They tried to shake up the formula by having Jason face off against a teen psychic, but it wasn't very good. It's not scary, it's not funny (Freddy vs. Jason worked just as well as a comedy), it's just lame. Formulaic and it was like they weren't even trying. At least it's not very long.

So take it away Mr. Blaschke. Beware spoilers if you haven't seen it...

Okay, PASSENGERS. The Wife and I saw it last week. You all know about the controversy surrounding the Chris Pratt character's actions. I'm not going to talk about that. I'm going to talk about something that has been overlooked amidst the hubbub: This movie just isn't very good. At it's heart, it's a rom-com, with all the requisite story beats that go with the type (once Jennifer Lawrence arrives on the scene, that is). Trouble is, there's no comedy. There are a few jokes, sure, but the story type depends on humor to carry the narrative. That's missing. Instead, the script compensates by replacing the comedy elements with Serious Bleak Interpersonal Trauma, which doesn't work with the established structure. It *could* have worked, had the film been intended as a "ship in a bottle" type story about mortality, gender issues, consent and free will... but it isn't. Those issues are pulled in to the story for cheap emotional resonance, with no intention of examining them in any depth. Instead, all that is chucked out the nearest airlock for an absurd, action-packed 'splodey finale. Lawrence's character is instantly back in love with Pratt, her bitter hatred and feelings of betrayal completely forgotten. They live happily ever after.There are four separate movies fighting for supremacy here, and none of them triumph. It's a mess. Jon Spaihts is the screenwriter, and it's hard to judge his ability as few of his scripts have made it to production, despite buzz as to how great he is and almost the entirety of his output coming in the SF genre. Still, I get the impression that this is a guy who learned everything he knows about science fiction by watching Armageddon, Event Horizon, and the like. Bester, Clarke, Dickson and Simak are absent from his reading list, I suspect.Case in point: HUGE SPOILER WARNING! The denouement comes when Pratt (who should've been vaporized 20 minutes earlier, and killed a dozen times over afterward, except rom-com, remember?) figures out that the "Autodoc" robotic healing chamber aboard the ship can induce a suspended animation-like state in subjects. But there's only one Autodoc on board the ship with more than 5,000 passengers and crew. So Pratt can put Lawrence under, so she can complete her trip, undoing the grave injustice he inflicted upon her earlier. He would die alone, however. Being the Love Of Her Life, she refuses, and they (presumably) grow old and die together during the 88 years of the voyage remaining. Isn't that romantic?Which is fucking stupid, pardon my French. They didn't have to die. According to all the information given to the viewer, there was nothing to prevent the two from *alternating* their use of the Autodoc. Leapfrog, as it were. Assuming Chris Pratt's character is 30-ish (he's 37 in real life) and Jennifer Lawrence's character is 26 (her real age) or slightly older, and that human life expectancy is somewhat longer in this high-tech future (reaching 100 is reasonably common, I'd expect), then they potentially have decades left they could live on the colony world. Follow: Pratt puts Lawrence under for six months. She wakes up, they spend a month together making mushy sweet love, then *she* puts *him* under for six months. Repeat. By the time they arrived at Homestead II, they'd be in their 70s, roughly. Barring any injury or illness the Autodoc couldn't fix, they should be healthy and fit, and due TREMENDOUS compensation from the parent company for saving the gazillion-dollar colony ship and all the liability it going BOOM! would've created. And Lawrence should be independently wealthy in her own right, transmitting breathless, harrowing non-fiction accounts back to Earth to be consumed by rapt audiences (presumably, she still has an agent to handle that--The film's complete amnesia regarding her entire career at the end was another big annoyance for me). Point is, they'd have 30, maybe 40 good years ahead of them, and they'd set foot on the colony world as the richest, most influential people there. They'd arrive as celebrities. Pratt could build Lawrence a MILLION houses and be romantic as hell. Instead, the screenwriter had that final vision of the little wooden house under the tree, and didn't think beyond that.Human beings want to survive. Want to live. The course this film took was defeatist and doomed. This film could've been so much better. It wasn't. The end.
I admit I hadn't seen the movie due to concerns from friends of more feminist inclinations about how creep-tastic the "I'm lonely to the point of suicide so I'm going to wake this hottie up to keep me company" part was. However, having read more about the movie, it's my understanding they do acknowledge how bad and selfish Chris Pratt's call was, even though he does have some very extenuating circumstances.

About the references to money, it apparently is possible to communicate with Earth--it just takes 13 years to get anything back. So with some creativity, the financial arrangements might be doable.

Just got back from watching the Season Seven finale of The Walking Dead. Here are some preliminary thoughts. The following comments are going to be spoileriffic as all get-out, so be ye warned...

The Good

*I did not see the back-stabbing from the Junkyard Gang (the Walking Dead wiki calls them "Scavengers") coming at all. Yes they're really weird and not very good people, but that was a legitimate surprise. The Scavenger leader is named Jadis and that's really appropriate--it's the actual name of the White Witch from C.S. Lewis's Chronicles of Narnia.

(And given how the Scavengers' deal with Negan seems to involve twelve--later ten--Alexandrians as slave labor or who knows what, her comment about having sex with Rick after the battle just got a lot more sinister.)

*The arrival of the Kingdom and Hilltop to save the day just as Negan is about to kill Carl was awesome. Negan is about to swing down and suddenly Shiva the tiger just jumps into the fray and kills one of his goons. Mayhem ensues, with the bad man getting away after another near-miss from Shiva. In TVTropes terms, this was a Crowning Moment of Awesome for Maggie, King Ezekiel, and both their respective factions. Good job.

*Negan's theatrical brutality is on full display once again with the whole "Sasha in the coffin" stunt. I knew what Sasha was going to do, but I didn't anticipate the coffin. That would allow for maximum surprise.

*Negan's impromptu freestyle poetry ("a stupid little prick named Rick") was amusing, as was the later portion of his demands.The Bad

*Way too many shots of Sasha inside the coffin and flashbacks to the last day Abraham was alive throughout the episode, with Sasha's story being told out of order. I understand what they were trying to go for, but they overdid it.

*Jadis shoots Rick and throws him off the top of the gateway, but later we see her marching him through the streets at gunpoint. Unless she immediately jumped down afterward, that's quite a bit of time in the midst of a battle between the Alexandrians and the Saviors for Rick to get away, get a gun of his own, etc.

*Given Negan's bizarre soft spot for Carl, I figured he was going to try to kill Rick when he had everybody at his mercy. Rick had already been wounded by Jadis and Rick has been plotting against Negan the whole time. Although Negan has a thing for punishing the loved ones of people who disobey him or try to kill him rather than the guilty ones themselves (Glenn for Daryl, Olivia for Rosta), I figured Carl was a special case. I guess if they follow the comic plot with Negan and Carl, Carl will have very good reason to rebuff Negan's "I thought we were friends." Negan's affection for Carl was one of the more interesting aspects of his character and to have him throw that away by trying to kill him weakens that.

*The whole of the last half of Season Seven suffered from "let's prolong the buildup to war as much as possible" and this episode had that.

What's Next?
*Negan is rallying his people to war, but he has the traitorous Dwight in his inner circle, as well as Eugene, whom he probably suspects helped Sasha die. Ezekiel, Maggie, and Rick are united against the Saviors, but the Scavengers were able to escape. As allies of Negan, they're going to need to be dealt with.The Verdict

*Despite the flaws, a fun episode overall. I'm looking forward to Season Eight.

Saturday, April 1, 2017

Marko Kloos' saga of young infantryman--now an officer--Andrew Grayson and his pilot wife Diana Halley unleashed another installment at the end of February with Fields of Fire, the fifth book in his awesome FRONTLINES series. I've read it twice so far (it's a very fast, engaging read) and now it's time for the review...

The Plot

Having defeated an assault by the alien Lankies on Earth (and apparently a couple more probes since then), the time has come for the nations of Earth to attack Lanky-held Mars and take it back from the aliens. Grayson returns to his role as a "pod-head," launched from a spaceship to call in orbital or nuclear bombardment on the ground, while Halley, having recovered from injuries incurred in the previous novel Chains of Command, will help fly in other forces once the beachheads are established.

But the Lankies have had a year and more to fortify Mars, and it won't be easy...

The Good

*Like the other books in the series, it's a very fast and engaging read. The first time I read it, it took only a couple days, in multi-chapter chunks. The second time around it was mostly gym reading, with a few bits done outside of my local LA Fitness. No more than four to six hours either time, with the second time probably less. Time flies when you're having fun, and I was having fun indeed.

*Per the above, once Grayson leaves Earth, this start rolling really fast and never let up. We have the Crowning Moment of Awesome battle in orbit, then the landings begin. Things go well, but then they go into the crapper real fast. And I kept reading to see what happened to Grayson and Halley.

*In one of my earlier reviews I pointed out that the Lankies in one of the books weren't described physically very well, but that's not a problem here. The descriptions are a lot more vivid and that's great.

*Some of the nasty surprises the Lankies unleash on Mars are foreshadowed early on.

*Kloos expands the world by introducing the reader to the EuroCorps, the German-dominated European federal military. The EuroCorps focuses on advanced, elegant technology, much like the efficient German engineering of today. The united Europe is also strongly anti-nuclear, a cultural continuity from Germany today that was no doubt amplified by the limited nuclear conflict that occurred around 100 years before the story began. It was very interesting to read about them, especially since Kloos was born in what used to be West Germany and served in its military during the Cold War.

*There are so many cool little details that one doesn't get them all on the first read. I didn't notice an interesting new characteristic of Lanky seed ships until the second read.

*The book explicitly ties itself in with the Frontlines Requiem comic series that tells what was going on in the Earth system during the events of Lines of Departure and Angles of Attack, including the Lanky conquest of Mars and the desertion of the North American Commonwealth's political elite with the most advanced military equipment.

*We finally learn why Halley is alienated from her family, to the point she hates her own first name.

The Bad

*There are repeated references to aircraft losses, some of them quite substantial, but the Lankies groundside don't have any sort of ranged attacks, let alone antiaircraft capability. The only time "on-screen" we see Lankies taking out aircraft is if they're close enough to grab them, although in the first book Terms of Enlistment an aircraft that made an attack run on a Lanky terraforming tower is taken out by something.

The Verdict

Chains of Command I didn't like enough to review it (it wasn't bad, it was just okay), but this is an excellent return to form. 9.0 out of 10.